Comparative Study of Some Heuristics for the Cross-Docking Problem

Several heuristics are here used and compared to solve the cross-docking problem. A cross-dock is a warehouse where goods are not stored; they are loaded within the day they arrived. In this paper several heuristics specific to the cross-docking problem are compared with meta-heuristics. The first meta-heuristic used is a genetic algorithm. The second meta-heuristic is a genetic and local search hybrid algorithm; it combines population-based algorithm with local search operators. All these methods are tested and compared on several instances of the problem. While the heuristics are fast, meta-heuristics give better solution.